[SunRescue] SS2 and OS

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2001 at 10:12:40PM -0500, Simeon Johnston wrote:
> I have a SS2 pizza box sitting under my desk at work and am thinking
> about trying to get it working.  What would be the best OS to run on
> this?  I don't have/want solaris so I think it is a choice between Linux
> and a one of the BSD's.  I have had experience w/ Linux but would also
> like to try out BSD as Mac OSX is based on this and I WILL be using a
> Mac.  I would be seriously offended and may have to open a can on anyone
> who tried to take my mac away.

OK, here goes. 

1.  I would suggest OpenBSD - www.openbsd.org .  You download one boot
floppy, then you can install everything else via FTP or HTTP download.

big plus for newbie:  the best documentation of any OS I have ever used. 

2.  While the "guts" of the system are BSD, there will be other parts that
might trip you up, since there are differences in the implementation.  That
is, one BSD may do something one way, or put a file in a particular
location, another may put the file somewhere else.  File locations will be
QUITE different between OS X and other BSDs, for instance.

> It also has a video card in it but I have no monitor ( I think it got
> thrown out.  It was some old 13 inch that was lying aroung in storage
> ).  Will I still be able to use the console w/ the card in or do I have
> to take it out to get console access?  What about the keyboard and
 mouse?  Do those have to be unplugged?

Unplug kb and mouse, hook up a dumb terminal or a terminal emulator on the A
serial port.  Settings:  9600-8N1 .

> I don't even know if it will work but it's worth a try.  I will have to
> get a new scsi drive.  The one in it now is a Micropolis ( My_what a
> piece of_CrapItIs ).  We bought 15 of these drives and every one off
> them died within a year.  Unfortuanetelly the company also went out of
> buiseness at the same time.

The boot floppy for OpenBSD will let you view the disk settings.  Maybe it
works, maybe it doesn't.  Try to create a disklabel and then mkfs (format)
the filesystem.  Any errors will be reported on screen.

> I know very little about sparcs ( that's why I joined the list ) so bear
> with me and my inane questions.

Welcome to SPARConia.

Cordially

Patrick Giagnocavo
patrick at zill.net